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Top40BookClubReadsNON-FICTION
Fun Home:
A Family Tragicomic
Alison Bechdel
Alison Bechdel chooses a graphic novel format to
explore her troubled relationship with her father.
An English teacher and director of the town’s
funeral home (the Fun Home), Bechdel’s father
seems to have been a distant man, struggling
with his homosexuality. Mere weeks after coming
out as a lesbian and discovering her father’s
sexuality, Bechdel’s father died, leaving her with
many questions unanswered and no one to
answer them.
Despite being a graphic novel, Fun Home feels
very much like a novel. Bechdel squeezes so
much detail and depth into the story – the reader
is totally immersed. The drawings are well worth
exploring, giving clues to time periods and
relationships, often with little captions to help
the reader along. At times the story is tortured
and it’s obvious Bechdel was working through
some issues surrounding her relationship with
her father as she created this book. It’s honesty is
raw and you can feel the confusion and distance
between family members and the impact it
had on everyone. For a book group looking for
something a little bit different, Fun Home would
be well worth a read.
What should I read next?
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit
by Jeanette Winterson